


Resolution

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [37]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 21:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: It's a tradition. Just something people do.





	Resolution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge and Froodle's prompt: The shape of the light

_Eerie, Indiana_  
_December 31, 1994_

"What exactly is that thing?"

Marshall Teller recognized the voice. Still, he startled so violently he almost dropped his binoculars. He'd thought was alone tonight, here on the quiet side of town, observing from the roof of the World O' Stuff.

Instead, his biggest regret of the year had managed to slip past his defenses unnoticed. Again.

"Oh, it's you," Marshall said, trying to convey in those three syllables that he wasn't going to start anything tonight if Dash wasn't, but that he had very important work to do and under the circumstances, would rather be alone.

Dash was silent. He just stood, uncombed hair sticking out in all directions, looking pale and unnatural in the semi-darkness, one marked hand in his coat pocket, the other gesturing toward the top of city hall.

"I think that thing is a ball of light shaped like a cow's head," Marshall added, turning his attention back toward the glowing orb when his nemesis persisted in not leaving. It was round, but not only did the overall color pattern suggest cow, he was pretty sure that the things protruding from its top were meant to be its horns and the things on the sides, its ears.

"You're serious?" Dash squinted into the distance, finally shaking his head in what seemed like disgust.

For a moment, Marshall thought he might leave. He wasn't dressed for the weather, after all. Just clad in his usual long coat and sweatshirt, no hat or gloves. Then again, weather never seemed to bother Dash much.

He tried not to sigh as Dash settled down beside him, just a few inches closer to the boundaries of his personal space than Marshall was strictly comfortable with.

After a second of internal debate about handing his equipment over to a known petty criminal, he passed Dash the binoculars. Maybe if he it saw up close for himself, Marshall reasoned, he'd get bored and go away.

Dash brought the binoculars to his eyes and aimed them in the direction of the crowd and thing above it.

Then he lowered them and turned to Marshall. "And why is there a glowing cow's head on a stick on the roof of City Hall?"

Marshall shrugged. "It's a time ball. You know, like they have in Times Square in New York? It gets lowered as the clock strikes midnight. Theirs was shaped like an apple for a while, 'cause the Big Apple. This _is_ Eerie, so ours was probably always going to be either a cow or corn."

Dash handed the binoculars back. "Why? What's the point?"

"Just a tradition, I guess," Marshall said, realizing he didn't know if Dash had ever seen a televised Times Square New Year's Eve. "Not the Eerie kind, the regular kind. Just one of those things people do. Like making resolutions and eating black-eyed peas and drinking champagne and all that other stuff." He realized he didn't know if Dash knew about any of that other stuff, either. "The Eerie Powers That Be have been talking about creating a few new local rituals for a couple years now. This one's probably harmless."

"Uh-huh." Dash smirked. "And you're up here because…?"

"Just in case it isn't harmless."

Marshall had no particular suspicions about the cow-shaped ball of light, but his parents were down there in the partying crowd and in Eerie, it never hurt to be vigilant. Besides, there was a music stage and a surprisingly good band backing the guy from his paper route who everyone insisted was definitely not Elvis, and it was hard to turn down a free Elvis Presley concert, even at a distance.

"I haven't seen anything weirder than usual yet," he added before Dash could ask. Then he thought about Mr. Radford dressed as Baby New Year, shuddered, and amended, "Well, not anything weirder than usual and also dangerous."

"Oh." Dash leaned back on his arms and crossed his legs in front of him. The movement brought him closer to Marshall. So close they were practically touching.

Not that it would matter if they were touching, because it wasn't like anything was going to happen. Not tonight and not ever again.

So Marshall couldn't exactly tell Dash to move, because that would make it weird.

"Where's your junior partner tonight?" Dash asked.

"Asleep." Simon Holmes, exhausted in the wake of two accidental UFO-watching all-nighters, had passed out over an hour earlier at precisely 10:27 p.m. leaving Marshall to complete tonight's mission alone.

Well, alone until now.

He and he nemesis sat together in awkward silence.

Then something occurred to Marshall. "Hey, do you have a watch?"

Dash raised his eyebrows and rolled back his left coat sleeve, revealing a large, expensive-looking gold watch.

Marshall reminded himself that he didn't want to know and it was better not to ask. "I was just thinking that if, you know, you wanted to, you could keep time. Let me know when it's getting close to midnight?" That was going to be Simon's job. That, and keeping an eye out for anyone sneaking up on them.

Marshall wasn't as effective as he needed to be without his trusted associate.

He was half-hoping being given a task would scare Dash away. Or at least provoke an argument that would give Marshall an excuse to order him to leave.

"Okay," said Dash. He shifted again, bringing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, a position that allowed him to keep a better eye on his watch, brushing against Marshall's side just a little in a not-at-all deliberate way in the process. "How often do you want updates?"

"Um, just say when we've got a minute to go, all right?" Which would only be about ten minutes from now. Then Marshall would either go home or deal with whatever weirdness happened. Either way, he wouldn't be alone with Dash for much longer.

He watched through the binoculars as Elvis left the stage and Mayor Chisel ascended and took the mic. Marshall couldn't hear the speech the mayor was giving, but guessed it was something about civic pride and low taxes. Those were two of Chisel's three favorite subjects and the speeches involving thinly veiled references to human sacrifice usually had more hand gestures.

He tried to ignore Dash beside him by concentrating on the crowd and contemplating his New Year's resolutions. Last year, there had been only one: Getting his driver's license. This year, he'd decided to be more ambitious. There were three things he was going to accomplish by the end of 1995.

One, he was going to get a part-time job.

Two, he was going to save up enough money to buy a car before his seventeenth birthday. Simon was still trying to talk him into a motorcycle, but a car that could carry both of them and all their investigation equipment seemed more practical and less likely to result in being grounded for life by his parents.

Three, he was finally going to uncover all the dark secrets behind the center of weirdness for the entire planet.

That last was a stretch, but do-able, he'd decided. Especially if he could keep himself from getting distracted.

The lack of distraction was directly related to the one resolution he was trying not to contemplate with Dash sitting so close to him. The one thing he absolutely  _wasn't_ going to do in the new year.

He would need to tell Dash about that resolution eventually, but he was still writing out the perfect way to inform him of the decision. One that wasn't going to leave any room for debate. It would be a speech that would clearly and directly cover the following items:

 

> **Item:** They were still mortal enemies.
> 
> **Item:** Mortal enemies did not make out with each other.
> 
> **Item:** Just because two people may have made out once or twice or even a few times didn't mean they should keep doing it.
> 
> **Item:** Mortal enemies did not sleep together.
> 
> **Correction to clarify previous item:** Mortal enemies did not share a bed.
> 
> **Double correction:** Mortal enemies did not fall asleep in the same bed at the same time even if nothing else happened between them ever.
> 
> **Triple correction:** Mortal enemies did not fall asleep in the same bed at the same time. If a little bit of making out sometimes happened before that, it was wrong and should stop. Also, nothing _more_ was going to happen between them because one person was not going to cross the line of mega wrongness that would lead him to even contemplate doing _that_ with the other person.
> 
> **Addendum to triple correction:** If the other person needed somewhere to spend the night sometimes, there was always Syndi's room while she was away at college. Or the attic.
> 
> **Second addendum to triple correction:** Besides, we don't even know for sure if we're biologically compatible.
> 
> **Item:**  You don't like me.
> 
> **Item:** I don't like you, either.

The speech still needed some work.

Still, kissing Dash was a mistake Marshall intended to leave behind in the old year. It was wrong, it was dangerous, and it was weird. Marshall's life's mission was fighting the forces of weirdness, not…doing anything else with them.

"One minute." Dash's voice cut through the latest round of anguished contemplation. He held up his watch and tapped the face.

"Thanks, man." Marshall turned his full attention back to the mission. Onstage, Mayor Chisel was still droning on, the crowd around him looking bored and restless. Then there was Fred Suggs, clad as the old year in long false beard and robe, and Mr. Radford—still wearing only a cloth diaper, 1995 sash, and top hat—moving to take the mic.

At that, Marshall turned the binoculars upward toward the cow light, which was slowly beginning to inch its way down the pole. Then he looked down and scanned the crowd, hoping to spot his parents, but his view of the ground was blocked by too many buildings and there were too many Eerie residents laughing and talking and passing plastic glasses of something bubbly among themselves.

He had to assume they were fine.

He looked toward the cow again. Beside him, Dash began to count along with the crowd: "10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…"

At one, a pair of soft lips met his own.

The kiss was gentle, almost hesitant, but it startled Marshall into dropping the binoculars.

It startled him enough that before he knew what he was doing, he was kissing _back_.

And then he was deepening the kiss and leaning into the warm embrace as fireworks exploded around them and the opening notes of "Auld Lang Syne" floated up from the stage below.

Despite everything Marshall had promised himself, he and Dash X spent the entire first minute of the new year wrapped in each other's arms. If they had been any other two people, it would have been a perfect moment.

Dash's lips turned upward in a half-smile as he broke away. "It's a tradition, right? Kissing the nearest person at midnight on New Year's? Just something people do."

"Right," Marshall echoed. "Just something people do."

And then he remembered why he was up here. He scrambled for his binoculars and found them, mercifully unbroken, on the roof next to him, then raised them to his eyes.

The cow head had finished its descent down the pole and was glowing merrily at the bottom. Glowing in electric sort of way, not in an eldritch, demon-summony way. The crowd was celebrating, laughing, throwing confetti, and fishing it out of their drinks. A new band had taken the stage and was playing some slow song Marshall vaguely recognized from the classic rock station. For the first time, he spotted his parents, dancing with each other near the jackalope statue.

Nothing in Eerie was any weirder than it usually was. Nothing except for what was happening on the roof of the World O' Stuff.

He felt Dash's warm arms around his shoulders. "Town still there, Slick?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Town's still there."

That was something else he needed to add to his speech. Something specific about how this whatever-it-was with Dash couldn't keep happening because it distracted him from his fight against all the other malevolent forces in Eerie and one day that was going to get somebody killed. Maybe, he considered, he should give the speech now, imperfect as it was.

Because Dash still had his arms around him. And Dash's lips were brushing against his ear as he whispered, "Now what?"

Now Marshall was going to go home by himself was what.

Their first kiss of the night could be excused by tradition.

This time, if Marshall let himself, it would be a clear and intentional breaking of a resolution he'd made for so many good reasons, and it would be so much harder to stop himself after that.

It would be another step toward succumbing to the forces of weirdness instead of fighting them.

It would be unthinkable.

Except…well, Dash was here and warm and Marshall should probably stay at least a little longer to keep an eye on the party, and besides it wasn't the new year everywhere yet, was it? Not even in the whole state. They still had almost an hour before it was midnight in the Central Time Zone.

Also, he didn't have his we're-not-doing-this-anymore speech ready yet. When he woke up, he would finish that, deliver it in a way Dash would understand, and this would be all over. Forever.

In the meantime, he told himself as he moved to meet Dash's lips again, he still had some time left.

He could probably still be okay as long as he stopped this before the new year reached California.


End file.
